This 30 for 30 Trailer for the XFL Is Pure, Bloodthirsty Football Porn

The real-life version of NFL Blitz that took football violence to its logical extreme gets the 30 for 30 treatment.

Much of the focus in the NFL these days is making the game safer for the players, and more palatable for the audiences watching at home. New rules and policies not only aim to protect players from the horrifying CTE epidemic that has only recently become public knowledge, but they also discourage behaviors like "sexually suggestive" touchdown dances (translation: twerk in the end zone, you're going to get fined).

But, only 15 years ago, Vince McMahon and the WWE launched an American Football League whose sole purpose was to capture the hard-nosed, rough, livid id at the heart of football. It was called the XFL, and though it didn't actually stand for anything, McMahon posited it as the "Xtra Fun League" in direct opposition to the more mainstream NFL's "No Fun League." It involved cheerleaders with even less clothing than they have now, a "Human Coin Toss" (which, given what we know about brain damage now, feels shockingly archaic to have taken place in the aughts), nicknames on the back of jerseys (including the beautiful, grammatically-challenged haiku "He Hate Me") and Xtreme names like the Memphis Maniacs, Orlando Rage, and Los Angeles Xtreme (not a noun). It was kind of like if you were playing the gratuitously brutal NFL Blitz video game, but the virtual reality version, but in a strip club.

This trailer from a new ESPN 30 for 30 Documentary that details its rise (if you can call it that) and very quick fall (you can definitely call it that) will give you a much better sense, in a mere 59 seconds, of its violent brutality than we ever could with our mere words.

While the league was indeed fun, it failed in one key area of business: making money. In one season, it lost $70 million, and the extra fun was no more. The documentary looks to be quite the romp through the league's wildest moments while it was still with us, and a dark reminder of how cool we still were (still are?) with the violence at football's core.